Writing With Dylan

What makes Dylan Thomas a great writer?There are many things that make his writing special, but at the heart of his success is the use of beautiful descriptive language.Let’s explore one way that he does this.

One way that Dylan makes his writing come alive is to use a noun as an adjective.Nouns – Nouns are usually thought of as naming words.Adjectives – An adjective is a word that is used to describe a noun. Dylan cleverly often uses one noun to describe another, it’s great for colours!

In the opening of his play ‘Under Milk Wood’ Dylan uses a variety of nouns to describe the colour ‘black’.

I am ‘crow black’.

Why is this so useful in writing? When writing about a colour it is especially useful because there can be so many different shades of the same colour! Let’s look closely at the colour green.

What kinds of green can you see?

What shades of green can you see now?

Now try this with different colours.